Social network services, also called social networks, social media portals, social media sites, social sites, social media servers, etc, and associated technologies are now everywhere. People like to share various types of information in the hope to reach contacts, also called friends, and/or as many individuals as possible. The objective is simple: share, learn and interact with others, may it be people who users know, or not.
Various social network services are currently offered to users. For example, Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (PUBL), called hereinafter Ericsson, is offering the LifeStore™ product which includes a social network service component for communicating with different other social sites. Open social API's (Application Programming Interfaces) are supported and included in the LifeStore product in order to allow seamless communication between LifeStore and other social network services sites such as for example Facebook™, Orkut™, Picasa™, Twitter™, or YouTube™ Lifestore™ allows a user to upload his/her media, such as for example text messages, images, audio or video files onto LifeStore™ and further enables bidirectional propagation (synchronization) of the user's media with other social sites. For example, when the user uploads a picture on the LifeStore™ account, Lifestore™ synchronizes that media with every other registered social network service of that user (as pre-configured by the user in his/her LifeStore account) and hence uploads the picture, for example, to the user's Facebook™ and Twitter™ accounts, insuring seamless propagation of the media, and sparing the user the need to manually connect and upload the media, individually, on every social network service.
Because the social network services are now easily available over the Internet, the pool of potential contacts, also sometimes called friends, is virtually unlimited.
A given North American user may, for example, regularly exchange information with people from Asia, Australia, Africa, or South America. With the existing product implementations, the user is able to post a message to multiple social networks simultaneously. However, each social network system receives the same message written in the original language used by the sending subscriber or poster. A problem arises in that the message reaches recipients in other countries or continents that do not understand the original language of the message. Therefore, the recipients may not be able to understand and “consume” the message properly. The problem may be further exacerbated in the context of commercial applications generating messages for an entire community of users for advertising purposes. For example, the Coca-Cola™ company may also possess a social network account on a given social network service and have a base of millions of connected “friends”, residing in different countries and speaking different languages. Sending media that includes text written in a given language may not be adapted and appropriate for everyone in the pool of recipient users.
Although there is no solution as the one proposed by present invention, the US Patent Application Publication US 2009/0248392 A1 presents some relation with the field of the present invention. This publication teaches an instant messaging interface including a dialog region and a communication entry region that allows the sending user to select an automatic translation between the entered text and another language associated with a recipient user. Once the message is translated, it is communicated to the participating users in the instant messaging communication session. According to this publication, the sending user needs to specifically select the translation to take place.
The US Patent Application Publication US 2009/0198487 A1 also presents some relation with the field of the present invention. This publication provides techniques for translating of text in a social network. Translation of text phrases are received from members of the social network and include content displayed in a social networking system, such as content from social network objects. A particular member of the network is provided with content including a text phrase in a first language and the member requests translation into another language. Friends from the social network participate to the translation of the text which is then presented to the member requesting a translation.
However, none of the above cited publications solves the problem associated with the dissemination of a message written in a first language to multiple social network sites and to multiple users of those sites who can be using a different language than the one in which the original message is written. Nor do these publications solve the problem of sending a message to a single user whose preferred language is unknown to the sender.
Accordingly, it should be readily appreciated that in order to overcome at least the deficiencies and shortcomings of the existing solutions, it would be advantageous to have a method and system for seamless transmission of messages written in various languages among social network sites. The present invention provides such a method and system.